The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has entered into 9 Unilateral Advance Pricing Agreements (UAPAs) with Indian taxpayers in July, 2017. With this, total number of APAs signed till date stands at 171 (Bilateral-12 and Unilateral-159).

The nine APAs signed pertain to diverse sectors of the economy including Oil & Gas exploration, education, banking, pharmaceutical, manufacturing and IT. They also cover international transactions and provision of software development services, ITES , engineering design services, distribution, contract manufacturing, etc.

About Advance Pricing Agreements (APA)

The APA Scheme was introduced in the Income-tax (IT) Act. It endeavours to provide certainty to taxpayers in the domain of transfer pricing by specifying the methods of pricing and determining the Arm’s Length Price of international transactions in advance. It aims to strengthen the Government’s commitment to foster a non-adversarial tax regime. Further, the taxpayer has the option to roll back the APA. The roll back provisions under the scheme were introduced in 2014. APA provides total of nine years of tax certainty including four year term of rollback.

About Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT)

CBDT is nodal policy-making body of the Income Tax (IT) department under the Union Finance Ministry. It is a statutory authority established under The Central Board of Revenue Act, 1963. It is supreme body in India for framing policies related to direct taxes. The composition of CBDT includes Chairman and six members.

The Executive Committee of National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) in its 4th meeting has approved seven projects in the sector of sewage infrastructure, ghat development and research.

Three projects each were approved in sewage sector in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Central Government will provide operation and maintenance cost for 15 years to all these six projects along with 100% central assistance

Besides, a research study to understand the non-putrefying properties of river Ganga in both water and sediment was also approved. The study will be an extension of a research carried out by National Environment Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) to identify the special properties of river’s waters.

About National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG)

NMCG is the implementation wing of National Council for Rejuvenation, Protection and Management of River Ganga (referred as National Ganga Council). It was established in 2011 as a registered society under Societies Registration Act, 1860.

It has a two tier management structure and comprises of Governing Council and Executive Committee. Both of them are headed by Director General (DG), NMCG. Executive Committee is authorized to approve projects under mission up to Rs.1000 crore.

Similar to structure at national level, State Programme Management Groups (SPMGs) acts as implementing arm of State Ganga Committees. This structure attempts to bring all stakeholders on one platform to take a holistic approach towards the task of Ganga cleaning and rejuvenation.

Note: In October 2016, National Ganga Council has replaced National Ganga River Basin Authority(NGRBA) which was constituted under the provisions of the Environment (Protection) Act (EPA), 1986.